The present disclosure relates generally to computing systems, and more particularly to the generation of entities used to support testing.
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option is a computing system. Computing systems may vary in complexity from a single processor operating in relative isolation to large networks of interconnected processors. The interconnected processors may be in close proximity to each other or separated by great distances both physically and as distance is measured in computer networking terms. The interconnected processors may also work together in a closely cooperative fashion or in a loose weakly coupled fashion. Because technology and processing needs and requirements may vary between different applications, the structure and arrangement of the computing system may vary significantly between two different computing systems. The flexibility in computing systems allows them to be configured for both specific users, specific uses, or for more general purposes. Computing system may also include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information based on the needs of the users and the applications.
Additionally, some examples of computing systems include non-transient, tangible machine-readable media that include executable code that when run by one or more processors, may cause the one or more processors to perform the steps of methods described herein. Some common forms of machine readable media include, for example, floppy disk, flexible disk, hard disk, magnetic tape, any other magnetic medium, CD-ROM, any other optical medium, punch cards, paper tape, any other physical medium with patterns of holes, RAM, PROM, EPROM, FLASH-EPROM, any other memory chip or cartridge, and/or any other medium from which a processor or computer is adapted to read.
Computing systems, whether they are complex servers or simpler standalone computers, tablets, or mobile devices, often include a significant number of interacting processors, hardware devices, and software components. The processors may include single processors, multi-core processors, and/or multiple processors. The hardware devices may include memory, secondary storage devices like flash drives and disk drives, and interfacing devices such as network interface components, graphics cards, hardware accelerators, and data acquisition systems, just to name a few. The software components may include operating systems, drivers for the hardware devices, services, application programming interfaces (APIs), software libraries, user applications, and/or the like.
To help ensure proper operation of the computing system, including the software components, one or more tests are typically designed and run on the computing systems to verify and/or validate the proper operation of the computing systems and the interactions between the processors, hardware devices, and/or software components. When testing a computing system, a test and/or testing infrastructure often generates one or more dummy data objects or entities that may be used to initialize the computing system and/or may be manipulated by the computing system and/or the testing infrastructure during the test. Depending upon the nature of the test and/or the entities, the initial properties and/or attributes of the entities may be random, partially random while being subject to one or more limiting constraints, deterministic, dependent on other entities, and/or some combination of each of these. In some circumstances, different properties and/or attributes may be deterministic and/or dependent on other entities while other properties and/or attributes may be random and/or partially random when, for example, the other properties and/or attributes may be largely irrelevant for the test and/or represent don't care characteristics. In some examples, each of the entities may vary in complexity from numbers and/or strings to complex and/or compound entities that may include as properties and/or attributes other entities. In some examples, the properties and/or attributes which are other entities may, themselves, include properties and/or attributes that may be nested many layers deep. Generating these entities may be quite time consuming and, depending on the care and/or variability when they are created, may contribute to insufficiently thorough testing of the computing system.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide systems and methods to improve the ease of generating and/or variability among entities used during testing.